A typical wireless network usually comprises at least one access point (AP) through which stations can connect to a wireless network. A common wireless network is a Wi-Fi network, which is a non-technical description that is generally correlated with the IEEE 802.11 standards, as well as Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) and WPA2 security standards, and the Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) standard. (Wi-Fi certification currently requires conformance with these standards.) A wireless network can include a wireless local area network (WLAN) or a network of some other size.
In a typical implementation, stations are connected to a device with a dedicated application such as data, video, or voice. A Quality of Service (QoS) module identifies and characterizes the packets based upon their importance and application constraints. A rate selection module determines the correct modulation and coding scheme (MCS) for each packet based on channel quality. The MCS as defined per WiFi standards determines constellation size and coding rates. Number of retries may be used when errors are encountered in packet retransmissions.